The Treaty

Chapter 8

When Artanis awoke it was to find herself in Celeborn's arms, nestled against his body, his skin warm against hers, and she smiled in contentment, closing her eyes, listening to the beat of his heart in his chest. For the first time in a very long time she felt entirely at peace, as if all was right with the world, as though she had attained some happiness and safety that no one could now take from her.

She opened her eyes again with a joyful little sigh, the dappled light of late morning filtering down from Menegroth's enchanted ceiling, to glimmer against the gold-veined emerald leaves and fall softly upon their skin. Artanis smiled, her hand light upon her husband's chest, rising and falling with his slow measured breathing. His long hair, silver and straight as the edge of a blade, spilled across the pillows and she wrapped a lock of it about her finger, her face flushing with heat ever so slightly as she recalled the previous evening.

She could hardly believe that she had once thought such a thing would be a horrendous ordeal. Well…perhaps it would have been when she had disliked him so very much. But it was hard now to remember how things had been when she had found him so loathsome because now she thought him the single most handsome man in all of Arda, and not just that, but there was no one else who could make her laugh, make her smile, make her feel as free as he did.

And there had been nothing, absolutely nothing repulsive about lying with a Sinda. She bit her lip as she recalled the feel of his lips, the way his body fit so well against hers, his big but gentle hands that had coaxed countless gasps from her.

But of course the best part of it all was that he had reciprocated. What she had done had been the result of a desperate and foolish plan, and yet as she had sat alone in her rooms, the thought of never knowing for certain what he felt for her and the looming possibility of losing him forever had torn her heart asunder. Whatever pride she felt had seemed so inconsequential and she had still feared his rejection, but the possibility of discovering that he loved her had outweighed her fear and driven her at last to his bed and to her joy he had welcomed her there.

The bond they had formed was strange but wonderful, and she could feel his dreams flitting through her own mind now, rather like hearing a conversation from a distance, and she pressed a gentle kiss to his shoulder as he shifted in his sleep. Today felt so full of promise, of new beginnings.

"Now is the hour of the oak. The King approaches!"

It was the cry of the herald and the clamor of doors being thrown open that shocked her from her happy reverie and she sat up, startled, feeling Celeborn jolt awake beside her. Until this moment everything had seemed surreal, like some sort of dream, but now everything felt very real, almost unbearably real.

Celeborn sat up with a jolt, staring at her, wide-eyed in shock, his face so close to her own, and then his eyes suddenly turned cold, distant, anger pulsing through them for a moment, but she didn't need to look at him to perceive the way he felt, for she could now feel his emotions moving amongst her own, like fish in a shared stream, and a ripple of rage belonging to him seared through her heart. "You seduced me!" He spat, his shoulders trembling with fury just barely contained.

"No!" She whispered, feeling her dreams crashing down around her, but she had no time to say anything else and they had only just enough time to pull the sheets up around them, but not enough time to extricate themselves from their naked embrace, before Thingol mounted the stairs in such a fit of anger that even Celeborn quailed at the sight of him as the two of them huddled together against the approaching storm.

"Celeborn, this arrived today. Would you care to explain…" Thingol began, his voice a deep roll of thunder, but he came to a sudden halt as he reached the top step and looked up, his eyes going wide and then softening at the sight before him. His eyes fixed upon Celeborn's neck and when Artanis turned to look it was plain to see why. The prince's skin was marked with a trail of little livid purple bruises and Artanis flushed a deep red as she recalled how she had made them the night before.

"Oh," Thingol said simply, as if he could not think of anything else to say, or else as if he had been shocked into silence. "Ah…" he let his hand fall to his side, the letter forgotten now along with the questions it had incited. "Well I suppose that the rumors were unfounded then after all," the King said, having the decency to appear somewhat ashamed at the situation he had just interrupted. "I ah…" he laughed, "I'll leave you to it then shall I?" And he turned to go, nearly stumbling over the pearls that were strewn all about the bedroom floor, but Celeborn interrupted him.

"What rumors?" The Prince asked, pulling the sheet around him as he made to stand, forcing Artanis to grab hold of it and pull back in the opposite direction so that she would not be left completely unclothed before the King. Celeborn turned to look at her, surprised, as if he had nearly forgotten she was there, and seated himself again as Artanis huddled more securely beneath the sheet. It was all horribly embarrassing and she wished more than anything that Thingol would leave, that Celeborn hadn't involved him in further conversation. She was certain her entire body must have turned beet red in shame by now.

Thingol had sensed her embarrassment and looked awkwardly between her and Celeborn. "Well…there was some speculation that the marriage had never been consummated," the King said, "and Artanis's cousins have also lodged this complaint…" he briefly raised the letter he held in his hand, "but I can see that that is not the case."

"No, that is not the case," Celeborn said stiffly. "The marriage is indeed a marriage of both vows and flesh, as you can well see."

"That I can indeed," Thingol said again with an awkward laugh. "A fortunate thing for your wife." He looked at her apologetically, gesturing with the letter. "The other marriage prospects they proposed for her were all rather unsavory characters. My apologies," he said as he retreated down the stairs, "particularly to you, Artanis. I did not mean to intrude. I am rather used to finding him on his own."

But Artanis merely swallowed hard, pulling the sheet ever the more tightly around her and closed her eyes, trying to steady her mind, but it wasn't helping matters that she could feel the heat of Celeborn's body pressed up against hers and the slow pulsing anger beating through his heart and into her own. So she had been wrong about all of it. He didn't love her after all and his fury with her now was ample proof of that. Last night…it had been nothing more than simple lust. It had felt like more than that…she had thought it was more…but then what would she know? She'd never done anything like that before.

The sound of the door closing at last behind the King and his entourage was a mercy but being left to face Celeborn's wrath was not, and he turned on her nearly as soon as Thingol had quit the room, his eyes cold and hard. "You seduced me," he hissed, his voice tight with tension. "And now I know why at last. You knew they were going to marry you off to someone else didn't you? That was what you hoped to avoid." He rubbed his hands over his forehead. "Dammit Artanis! I knew you were frightened of your cousins…but to this extent…to do this…"

"I knew nothing of it!" She insisted but he was livid and Artanis could feel desperation trying to claw its way out of her as she reached for his hands but he tore them away.

"Who was it?" He asked, eyes swimming with rage. "Who were they going to marry you to that you hoped to avoid?"

"Celeborn I knew nothing of it, I swear!" She insisted, swallowing the sobs that threatened to rise in her throat. And perhaps this was even more terrible than being parted from him, this being married to a man, having shared her body with a man, who loved her not at all and whose kind regard had now turned to anger and hatred.

He took a deep breath but it seemed do to nothing whatsoever to steady his nerves. "You've ruined the both of us! You tricked me into wedding you against your will!"

"I was not unwilling!" She pleaded with him, her chest tight.

"Not unwilling is a far cry from willing!" Celeborn shouted. "And what does that make me?" His eyes were intense and unflinching as they bored into hers. "I hate myself for what I've done to you!"

"Celeborn I was willing!" She cried, the beginnings of tears rising to her eyes now. "And you didn't exactly protest!"

He clenched his jaw in anger and she felt as if she were about to choke on her heart. "What do you mean you were willing?" He asked, his voice a low growl.

"I mean I…I wanted it!" Centuries of indoctrination to refrain from stating such things caused her to flush red in shame as she said it. What pride she had left was completely ruined by the confession and yet she felt she owed him some explanation for what she had done. The idea was beginning to dawn on her that she had bound him to her for all eternity, that he would now never be able to know happiness with someone. The thought had not occurred to her the night before, but now it had and it made what she had done seem extraordinarily selfish.

"Wanted it," Celeborn spat, "not me. You wanted your safety, your marriage, the protection of my kingdom from your cousins, from the marriage to someone potentially lower in your eyes than even I am."

"No!" Artanis cried, tears spilling from her eyes at last as she took a long shuddering sob. "I did it because…because I wanted you only I was afraid to say…"

"And your solution was to crawl into my bed in the middle of the night and seduce me?" His voice was laced with anger and, ashamed of herself, she nodded, reaching up to wipe the tears away but they did not stop.

"I saw no other way!" She cried. "I thought that if you loved me you would accept and that if you did not then you would decline. Celeborn, I'm so very sorry for what I've done! I never…I never, never would have done it if I thought you would do it without loving me!"

Celeborn stared at her with a hard look for a long minute and she could tell that he did not believe her as he shook his head and rose from the bed as if he meant to quit the room. "Celeborn please," desperately she reached for his hand, catching it. "Please!" She pleaded. "Wait but a minute and I will prove it to you!"

He eyed her suspiciously for a moment but, wordlessly, seated himself on the bed once more while she rushed to her rooms, gathering up the book in her arms and returning to thrust it into his hands. "Here," she said, the desperation she felt bleeding through into her voice. "Here, it's all in here."

He looked at her for a moment with eyes that spoke of betrayal, but after a moment he sighed heavily and opened the book. He stared at it for a moment and then looked up at her once more. "I can't read it," he said simply, a thread of sadness running through his voice, and Artanis sat down heavily on the bed, as if the wind had been knocked out of her. This had been it, her grand plan to prove to him that she loved him, and yet she had stupidly forgotten that he could not read Quenya. She felt her heart shatter to smithereens at her feet, the tears flowing freely as she began to sob, pulling the blankets up around her, wishing the earth would simply open and swallow her.

"Why are you crying?" She heard him ask her, his voice weary, most of the anger gone now, sadness having taken its place.

"Because I've done a terrible thing," she said. In the wake of tragedy, lies and pride were too difficult to maintain and so she spoke the truth instead. "I wanted you for myself and so I bound you to me against your will. And I was so very stupid that I wrote everything in Quenya. And now I'm ashamed that you've seen my body."

"Won't you come out?" She heard him ask as she felt him pulling gently on the blankets, but she shook her head and refused.

"A moment," she pleaded and heard him sigh again, the sound of him slowly turning the pages. She needed a moment before she could bear to look at him again.

And then she heard an intake of breath, soft, but she had heard it all the same. "I know these words…" Celeborn said, his voice trailing off into silence, and there had been no anger in his voice, nor any weariness, but instead his words had been filled with…hope…incredulity…

Taking a deep breath, Artanis pulled the blankets down from over her head. She could not see through her own tears and so she wiped them away, opening her eyes to see that he had turned to the last page she had written, his fingers tracing the three words in the middle of the paper: I love him.

"These ones I can read," he said again, his voice gruff, his eyes meeting hers, questioning, unsure, and she swallowed hard again. Silence followed, a silence in which they merely stared at one another, afraid to say anything.

"Are they true?" He asked at last and she nodded, trembling now, her grip on the sheets relaxing a bit.

"They're true," she said, her voice a hoarse whisper after all of the sobbing, her heart a dull and despondent beat in her chest. Now came the part where he would look upon her with pity and tell her how he did not feel the same and how very sorry he was about it. She wasn't sure if she could endure that.

He swallowed hard, seeming unsure of what to do, and then at last he said, "well I suppose that I cannot be angry with you anymore, not when I am guilty of the same sin."

"What do you mean?" She asked, her heart pounding a thousand beats per minute in her chest.

"Wait," he said, standing, clasping her hands for a moment, and then he was gone, returning a moment later with a small chest. Climbing onto the bed, he threw the lid open and Artanis saw that it was crammed full with scraps of paper. He began to pull them out, frantically almost, unfolding each one, spreading them out on the bed, and Artanis gasped, her heart stopping dead in her chest.

In carefully, painstakingly printed Tengwar, on every little scrap of paper, it read: I love her. It was undoubtedly his handwriting, the same way as he had written in the book, each letter so carefully printed and yet helplessly sloppy. "I…I got a little better as I went on…" he said, flashing her a small hopeful grin as he spread out the notes. "These were the first ones I wrote," he gestured to a few that were terribly misspelled, "and these were yesterday…" he pushed a stack of correctly written ones towards her.

Artanis could do nothing save laugh through her tears, her heart soaring from the depths of sorrow to the peaks of joy. "Oh my froward savage," she gasped, still laughing, her hands going to his face, brushing the silver hair back from his eyes, "I do love you so very much."

"My prideful little prude," he whispered, his eyes meeting hers as he took her hands, "I love you just as much." And this time when he kissed her she knew exactly the reason why.